4 ms·
FWIW, Ulysses isn't particularly incomprehensible. To the extent that it's difficult to read, it's much more the shifting narrative perspective, widely ranging
by twoodfin 9y ago
FWIW, Ulysses isn't particularly incomprehensible. To the extent that it's difficult to read, it's much more the shifting narrative perspective, widely ranging references, and stream-of-consciousness rather than the vocabulary.
Take this typical section from the "Lotus Eaters" chapter, wherein Mr. Bloom is contemplating the origins of the wares in a tea shop:
So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over again: choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing around in the sun, in dolce far niente. Not doing a hand's turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in Botanic gardens. Sensitive plants. Waterlilies. Petals too tired to. Sleeping sickness in the air.
Hard to be too confused by the imagery and mood in this passage.
Now, Finnegans Wake...
- kiechu 9y agoI will run Finnegans Wake in a moment and I will get back with a response. I must find it in a text format.
- kawera 9y agoHave you tried non-fiction books?
- kiechu 9y agoWhat do you have in mind?
- samstave 9y agoThe Bible. (Just kidding) What about having this read a tweet history, say that of a POTUS?
- kiechu 9y agoFrom what I see, POTUS is circling in basic 1000 words.
- samstave 9y agoCan you plot his most used to least used, please.
- samstave 9y agoActually, I do have a requested challenge for you: US laws. Can you evaluate this law that just was signed 3 days ago: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB94 http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml... (There is a link to a PDF of the law if you prefer to DL the PDF first...)
- kiechu 9y agoThat is bit different analysis, but I will. Ping me on @r_kierzkowski on twitter, so we will stay in touch.
- kiechu 9y agoAccording to bill you posted: Number of Pages: 217 Number of Total Words: 65396 Number of Unique Words: 3106 You will know 90% of words after 28 pages which are 12.90% of the book. At that page, you will know 36.77% of unique words. The graph is less regular but it has more or less same shape. I will not publish this part because it is not a book.
- kawera 9y agoI was thinking of popular business books, be it in marketing, management... or, why not, "The Mythical Man-Month".
- losteric 9y agoCan you try a low-brow book, like Twilight?
- tomjakubowski 9y agoExcerpts from Finnegans Wake are great fodder to break CSS layouts during development. Somanyobscenelylongwordswithoutbreaks.
- debt 9y agoulysses and finnegans wake is inspiration porn. i find the more jarring the sequence of words/sentences/phrases from a few passages the more inspired i become after. best to have this type of stuff on hand when you get stuck. it's neurological
- kiechu 9y agoHere are Finnegans Wake graphs. It is indeed even more complicated. https://github.com/vocapouch/vocapouch-research/blob/master/books/Book%20Coverage.ipynb https://github.com/vocapouch/vocapouch-research/blob/master/... Number of Pages: 729 Number of Total Words: 218793 Number of Unique Words: 50872 You will know 90% of words after 387 pages which are 53.09% of the book. At that page, you will know 60.64% of unique words.